This time: Low-slung, low-lying, midpriced Midcentury Modern homes in Meyerland!
Location: 5015 Heatherglen Dr.
Details: 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths; 2,633 sq. ft.
Price: $448,750
The Scoop: Restored 1959 ranch-ish contemporary designed by architect William Wortham with terrazzo floors, walnut paneling, and unique brickwork. Decked out in retro furniture. Listed six weeks ago; price just chopped by $10K.
Open House: Sunday, 2-4 pm
The tour continues this way . . .
If you’re looking for clues to help you figure out what the McDonald’s on Post Oak is gonna look like when it gets rebuilt, the flashy new website for the Titan doesn’t help much. There’s a video that shows Randall Davis’s latest theme-heavy condo tower from all sorts of dramatic angles, but it never answers the question most of us have been asking since the project was announced last fall: How, exactly, is the drive-thru gonna fit next door?
Davis told the Houston Business Journal last September that the new McDonald’s would be a “long, skinny building” facing Post Oak, between the Titan and the new Alexan Post Oak apartments directly to the north. In the new video, though, there are no Golden Arches, and camera angles artfully block the most direct views of that portion of the building site.
There’s no mention of the McDonald’s on the Titan website. There is, however, a welcome second confirmation that another fine food establishment will be built down the street at Boulevard Place:
A newly planned Whole Foods Market, only half a block away, places hard to find gourmet items at your fingertips.
Okay, so it’s just advertising copy. But it’s recent!
After the jump, more views of the Titan — none of which show where the real Big Macs are gonna live.
All the condos in Randall Davis’s new Titan condo tower on Post Oak will be named after . . . industry titans! Get it? On the 18th floor, for example, you’ll have units named after J. Paul Getty, Coco Chanel, Pablo Picasso, and . . . Bill Gates! Now that’s a party. Floor 14? More people of brilliance, though a few of them might not actually get along so well with each other: Frank Sinatra, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Rudolph Valentino, Steven Spielberg. Isn’t that clever?
It gets better: The Brin/Page is . . . a two-bedroom! Strangely, the Buffet has a Kitchen and Dining Room that are separated from the rest of the unit’s living space. And the three-bedroom penthouse named after Mies van der Rohe — whose neighbors are of course Rupert Murdoch and Neil Armstrong — has a Great Room with a curved wall in it, and is connected to the Entry Foyer by a long hallway.
One unit on floors 23 and 24 is simply named The Titan. But there’s no reason for Randall Davis to be so bashful — he really ought to go ahead and name it after himself. Is there anyone else in Houston who even comes close to his stature in the themed-condo market?
The Titan is a break from Davis’s earlier projects, though — because it seems to have so many different themes! Put all those architects, movie stars, musicians, Silicon Valley insiders, oilmen, and suicidal novelists together in a tower styled vaguely like a comic-book rocketship, add in Michelangelo’s sculpture of David as the naked brochure-and-website coverboy, and you’ve got the Titan’s winning marketing formula! A bit confused? Sure. But if anyone can mix all this stuff up and make it work, it’s Randall Davis.
After the jump, floorplans that prove what we all know already: Designing a great building is just like planning a great dinner party that includes a few famous dead people!
Remember those sleek modern million-dollar white-stucco townhouses designed by New York architect Francois de Menil for a small lot over in Temple Terrace, just behind Allen Parkway?
It was unusual to include the One-Two Townhomes being on the AIA Houston 2006 Home Tour in that they were, and are, unfinished. “My concern was that they would soon be sold,” says [developer Carol Isaak] Barden, “and then nobody would get to see them.”
She shouldn’t have worried. One of the units apparently sold a little less than a year later, and the other is still on the market — though it’s not a million-dollar townhome anymore. After construction finally ended last July, there were five successive price reductions. Since the end of last month this 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,845-sq-ft. townhome has been available for a humbling $779,000. If you count the garage level below and the rooftop deck as a single story, that’s almost as good as getting one whole floor . . . free!
After the jump, a brief gawk inside.
It looks like our earlier report about the Fairmont at San Felipe — the strip-center-apartment combo planned for the southeast corner of San Felipe and Winrock — was wrong. Judging from this new rendering of the complex, it sure looks like those apartments will actually be stacked directly on top of the retail spaces, forming a lovely parking-lot-courtyard tableau!
Permits for construction of the apartments were just approved by the city. After the jump: closeups, plus the plan that led us astray.
Why aren’t these $399,900 Heights bungalows-on-sticks selling? Tricon Homes has been trying to get rid of them since November . . . of 2006!
In the first part of 2007, Tricon dropped the asking prices for 2016 and 2020 Singleton twice from the original $449,900. But since June there’s been no movement.
They look like they’ve got everything: Cute front porches, plus garages with 13-ft. ceilings! Just completed! So what’s the problem?
Below the fold: How to slide a $400K house onto a 2900-sq.-ft. Heights lot!
This is the best image we’ve been able to find online of the 25-story apartment tower about to go up at the site of the former Ed Sacks Waste Paper Co. at 440 Studemont, just north of Memorial Dr.
And it makes you wonder: Do these out-of-town developers really know what they’re doing here? First they give the project a name — “Legacy at Memorial” — that makes it sound like a funeral home, in a town where death is already a major industry. Then . . . they think Houston residents will stand for 15 percent of the units in the combination highrise-lowrise development being marketed as “affordable housing.” But weirdest of all . . . it looks like they forgot to give their building a theme!
Memo to Legacy Partners and your California retiree funders: Your tower is going up against some aggressively themed competition. When renters can go next door and feel like they’re in Italy, or go down the street to get a little stucco taste of New Orleans, or cross Allen Parkway for a full-fledged Beaux-Arts Alamo resort revival, just who do you expect is going to want to want to live in an apartment that looks like . . . a building in Houston, Texas?
More on the tower that forgot to put on its clothes and makeup . . . after the jump.
The Magnolia Lofts, planned for the site of the former Ashland Tea House, has a new sales trailer at 1801 W. 18th St. in the Heights and a new, less ironic name. The project is now called Heights Esplanade I — though the development’s website throws in an odd extra apostrophe for good measure. Best news: The same website declares that “At the Esplanade, urban loft living will take on a new meaning.” The building will be four stories high, contain forty condos, and sit on a two-story “partially submerged” garage.
A HAIF reader who stopped by the sales office reports that Conroe-area builders Garrett Austen are planning two additional phases, with 80 and 120 more condos respectively.
After the jump: floor plans for Unit 403, on sale now for $261,118.
Do you experience the urge to urinate frequently? Do you suffer from recurring bladder infections? An enlarged prostate? And one more question: Do you have $8.5 million burning a hole in your (probably moist) pocket?
Well then, you’re certainly going to pee in your pants when you see the exciting floor plans for the two “Gramercy Tower Suite” penthouses on the top floors of Houston’s 34-story Turnberry Tower! Yes, this will be the height of luxury: 11,860 sq. ft. of living space on three separate levels of an Uptown highrise; an additional 3,535 sq. ft. of terraces; 4 bedrooms plus a Den, a Guest Suite, and a Staff Room for live-in help; a Media Room, two Lounges, and a 2-story Great Room; a private elevator entry; your own private pool and cabana; and so much more.
But forget all that. What makes this little pied-Ã -terre special is that even if all that space perched high in the sky (and the at-least-jaw-dropping panoramic views) gives you an unmistakable urge to evacuate, you’ll only be a few shuffling paces away from a toilet: Each unit comes with nine-and-a-half bathrooms. And if that’s not enough, there’s plenty of room to add more!
Read on for more of the scoop on where to poop: floor plans for the top two floors, with more porcelain palaces clearly marked. Plus: a closeup of Swamplot’s favorite Turnberry penthouse pit stop!
It’s not just the rice silos that’ll be leaving the First Ward. Next thing you know, they’ll be demolishing . . . the used-auto-parts yard across the street. A source very close to Charles Kuffner reveals that the owner of Johnny Franks Auto Parts at 1225 Sawyer St., across the street from the Mahatma Rice silos, has already sold the land to residential developers.
But wait. Johnny Franks Auto Parts bills itself as “The Nation’s Oldest Salvage Yard.” Is this true? If so, how could Houston let such an important historical site be destroyed? Founded in 1910, the salvage yard for years advertised itself as “the house of a million parts.” Sadly — like so many other historic structures in Houston — that may be its ultimate fate.
After the jump, Kuffner counts the reasons why there’s probably no stopping residential development from taking place on this historic site:
That house built out of shipping containers on Cordell St. in Brookesmith looks like it’ll be ready for delivery soon. Yes, this was a spec house — and yes, there already is a buyer.
Last year, Numen Development owners Katie Nichols and John Walker used shipping containers to construct the Apama Mackey Gallery on 11th St. in the Heights — because the gallery owner wanted a structure she can move when the property owner kicks her off the land. But the house Numen is building on Cordell looks like it’s going to be around for a while. It comes with its own, uh . . . doublewide lot, and it’s right across the street from a meat-processing plant.
After the jump: drawings, models, and an earlier construction photo of this neat little three-bedroom, three-bath, 1,851-square-foot package!
Uptown renters: Were you planning on staying in your apartment for a while?
A sharp-eyed reader notes that ZOM — the developer of the Bel Air on Allen Parkway and the new Katrina Memorial apartments planned for Revere St. near Kirby and Westheimer (pictured above) — is also planning a 250-unit apartment complex somewhere near the Galleria. The company’s going to stick with its strategy of buying existing apartment complexes, demolishing them, building newer apartments in their place, and then selling them off, ZOM’s Trip Stevens tells Globe St.‘s Amy Wolff Sorter:
“It’s the only way to go in that submarket,” Stevens says. But then he adds real news:
Stephens says ZOM will do the same thing to get its third Houston project into the Galleria submarket. He says the closing for the existing apartment complex should occur late in the first quarter. The plan is to start scraping the three-acre site around midyear.
That’s information a few Galleria-area renters who live in three-acre apartment complexes will probably want to know.
Houston is such an international city! If you’ve been here a while, you’ve probably already found Tuscany in Houston and Hong Kong in Houston, and perhaps also Charlottesville, New Delhi, Versailles, New York, Mexico City, Cairo, Dubai, Atlanta, and maybe even some Lubbock in Houston as well.
Well, here’s a new one: Now you can discover Barcelona in Houston too. And it’s in Spring Branch!
Fortunately, for those of you tired at the thought of all that around-the-world-in-eighty-themed-apartments travel, this little bit of the Spanish Mediterranean comes in the familiar form of a Houston townhome six-pack: two rows of bright yellow tightly fit stucco-coated boxes facing a bare concrete driveway.
So really, it shouldn’t seem so foreign after all.
After the jump, more pics!
There’s more from our Fifth Ward correspondent, who’s been poking around properties near the MDI site:
InTown has various other project coming up in the 5th Ward/East End. The Cage/Gillespie property is now listed on HAR. They also plan on building English style bungalows at 619 Meadow St. However, they are in replatting stages now.
[Tuesday] Swamplot reported “Cline and Fall of Eight Houses“. These are about 2 blocks from the MDI site and there is a variance request up for subdivison renaming. I did some research and it seems they are owned by Lanterra Homes. They were supposed to have a project called Deca but looks like it may have been scrapped. Lanterra has built homes near InTown homes before.
Photo: 3421 Gillespie, for sale on HAR
Sure, there’s Post Properties, the Sonoma in the Rice Village and all those tired old buildings downtown, but most Houston developers won’t put apartments on top of retail unless they’re dragged kicking and screaming. And really, the idea of living next to a strip center evokes a much warmer, more folksy feeling. Isn’t that what Houston is all about?
The latest: The Fairmont on San Felipe, on the southeast corner of San Felipe and Winrock. A couple of apartment courtyards, connected by a central garage, behind two strips ready for 41,500 square feet of retail. It’s now under construction, on the site of the old Regency Arms apartments, which burned last year after it had already been vacated for demolition.
Update, 2/14/08: Looks like they have been dragged!
